Lost Pond

by Henry Abbott

Lost Pond

The pond had no visible inlet, but a considerable quantity of water was flowing out of it every minute. This must be replenished through some subterraneous passage, and the water doubtless filtered through an enormous field of ice that had been buried under millions of tons of rock and earth for countless ages — since the glacial period, when the mountain slid down from the arctic regions into its present position.

Bige and I discussed it at supper, and that is how we accounted for the peculiar conditions. We were also agreed that there could now be no doubt that this was the pond of Sabattis-Parker fame. The stories fitted well with the facts. Some one surely had been here before and a long time ago, else how could the ruins of the camp and the moss-covered dugout be satisfactorily explained?

That night Bige and I went to bed with clear consciences. We were at peace with all the world. We had put in a long and strenuous day, had met and overcome many obstacles and difficulties, and had accomplished something worth while. We had recovered and put back on the map a pond which had been lost for more than thirty years. Incidentally, we had had a lot of fun in doing it. A pair of hermit thrushes holding converse with each other across the valley and high over our heads sang us to sleep.

We were awake in the morning before the sun and in our skiff out on the pond casting with great care our most alluring flies. We whipped every square inch of that pond. We spent two hours and a half on it, used every fly in the book, and never got a rise. We never even saw a trout big or little. We could have seen them had they been there. It was not more than three feet to the bottom in the deepest part, and we could see the bottom and everything, animate and inanimate, in the water. The shoals of trout we had seen and heard — some of which we had eaten — the night before, had disappeared utterly and completely. Bige said "They have gone back into the ice-chest."

The conviction finally forced itself through our dense intellectual domes that the trout in Lost Pond gave attention to business only at night. This was a night fish pond. We should have to wait until night for another bite.

Slowly and sadly we poled back to camp. The sight that met us on landing, to employ a stock literary expression, "would have made the stoutest heart quail." It would surely be stating it mildly to say that we were amazed.

The pack-basket which contained our provisions we had left standing just inside the tent flap. It had been dragged out and was now lying on its side several feet from the tent, while remnants of its contents were scattered over the forest carpet in every direction. A bag of flour, intended for flapjacks, had been ripped open and the flour thoroughly mixed with leaves and dirt, ditto the sugar and coffee. Butter was nicely spread over a ground area about six feet square, while a half-eaten loaf of bread was floating in the water. Potatoes and onions had been chewed up and "the chawins" spat out on the ground. To add a touch of the artistic to the picture of destruction, the yolks of a dozen eggs gave a dab of yellow to the southeast corner. Porcupine quills were sticking in the splints of the basket and were liberally sprinkled over the ground, while disturbance in the leaves marked the path where the slab of bacon had been dragged away.